A functional and comfortable operator station is indispensable to productive and ergonomic operation of many types of modern machinery. Features such as a comfortable seat, armrests equipped with controls within easy reach, and various visual displays, touchscreens and the like positioned and oriented for easy viewing and access will be familiar to most persons working in the field of off-highway machines, certain marine vessels, and even some types of stationary construction or yarding equipment. The functional purposes of such machines often drive the design of operator stations, and in recent years the value and desirability of highly sophisticated operator stations has been increasingly recognized. Many operator stations are equipped with cushions or supporting bellows or the like for shock absorption, and many are equipped with various controls for adjusting angle or orientation of the seat or other parts of the operator station in three-dimensional space.
Certain machines, notably off-highway wheeled machines and tracked machines, are commonly operated in opposite directions. In other words, for certain machines and operations in certain environments, it is typical for an operator to drive the machine or operate equipment in one direction, and then alternate to a reverse direction. Skidder machines, known from the field of forestry equipment, are a typical example, where the operator might repeatedly drive the skidder forward, reverse it, drive forward again, and meanwhile utilize different work implements of the machine. Compactor machines likewise are often operated more or less equivalently in each of a forward direction and a reverse direction. To name another example, backhoes are typically constructed so that an operator can face forward to utilize a loading bucket at the front of the machine, or face rearward to operate an excavating bucket. For certain machines, the operator station itself may be rotated between a forward orientation and a rearward orientation, and the operator given the capability to reverse or adjust the manner in which the various controls operate implements of the machine and the like.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,827,345 is directed to an electro-mechanical seat swivel system where a bottom plate is mounted on a frame of a machine and a top plate pivotally mounted on the bottom plate, with an operator seat mounted to the top plate. The seat can lock in predetermined operator seat positions, and latch control switches disposed at operator controls to selectively allow the seat to be rotated among the predetermined operator seat positions.